Ahhh this is probably one of the posts I was thinking about.
viewtopic.php?p=588622#p588622------------------------------
-----------------------------
Grim... wrote:
Got to level five, or something. I didn't think it was that much fun, to be honest.
Hmmm, where to start
First off, it's true to say that WoW simply doesn't click with some folks, and that's all there is to it, it is a unique game and the way it all hangs together ultimately won't be everyone's cup of tea - and that's fine.
However, playing out to Level 5 isn't going to show you even a tiny, minuscule fraction of what the game has to offer, and it's not uncommon for a 'first hour's play' reaction to the game to be a little bit 'Erm, WTF, this is boring and stupid.' A mate of mine who's now been playing the game for 3 1/12 years (same as me) denounced it as a 'hitting crappy looking wolves on the head simulator' after his first encounter with it, before giving it another crack of the whip a month or so later and that time around falling for its charms.
Several points to remember:
1) At the start of the game your character is rubbish. This is intentional. You're Level 1, whatever your chosen class you only have a handful of abilities and they're all a bit feeble. All your gear is shite ('gear' is a catch-all terms for your clothes, armour, weapons, trinkets etc), and you're really quite squishy so can be killed with irritating ease.
2) On top of that, the game world is small when you're low level. You'll be put into a very limited 'hand holding' starting area, this is designed to show you the ropes and start to introduce a few of game's key concepts. For some this breaks the 'MMORPG' aspect of the game, because you're pretty much channelled through a series of tightly defined activities and missions. Do be aware that there's absolutely nothing stopping you running off in completely the 'wrong' direction and straight out into the big bad world, but as a low level character everything will be able to kill you on sight and there won't be anything for you to do that's level-appropriate.
3)
The first few levels, the first few hours, are not what this game is. WoW is so huge, so sprawling, there is just
so fucking much to do that there's no other way for Blizzard to do it at the start, and even now in its 'friendlier than ever' incarnation, it's still quite often massively confusing and daunting. (See GY's multiple posts to this thread asking how stuff works.)
4) As you pass through the first few hours, you should notice everything starts to get better. At Level 10 you'll be invited to choose a class specialisation, so for example if you're a warrior you get to choose to be ARMS, FURY, or PROTECTION, and you'll get your first talent point to spend in the respective tree. This is when the character really starts to become 'yours' and you can start to build him around how you want to play. On top of that, every even-numbered level from (IIRC) Level 4 onwards, you can go to your class trainer and he'll start to teach you new abilities that you can stick onto your action bar and start to enhance the options available to you in any given situation.
5) Enjoy the world as you explore it. The quality of the writing in WoW is massively variable, but when the quests and storylines are at their best, they're everything from funny to poignant to sad to uplifting - it's a rich, beautifully crafted world, take some time to soak it in.
6) Similarly (and I'm sure your PC is up to this Grim...), max the game out graphically, make sure you've got the sound and music turned on - it's not going to give Crysis any sleepless nights in terms of its graphics engine, but I honestly think WoW is the prettiest game I've ever played thanks to the sheer majesty of the artwork style and characters, it's no secret that Blizzard are reckoned to employ some of the best artists in the world. Again, you're not going to be able to fully appreciate this from the starting zone.
7) WoW is a social game. It makes such a massive difference if you're playing the game with friends. Now I don't mean that you're literally playing with them all the time, but in the same way that when you're logged into XBox Live or Steam, you'll have your friends lists, you'll have messages, you'll get info about what your friends are up to, you'll have the option to play together if you want to. WoW works in the same way, if you've got IRL friends on the same server as you, that's a huge brucey bonus, but just being in a guild is a huge brucey bonus. For example whenever I log into the game there's almost always going to be a guildy or two on, quite possibly someone I know IRL. On a good night there might be 10+ of us all online, with various stuff being discussed in the guild chat channel.
On top of that, friends and guildies can help you out, and you can help them out, with awkward quests, or your professions, or checking your bank to see if you've got an item they need for something - all that stuff.
8 ) Instances/dungeons (the words are interchangeable). From Level 15 onwards you can use the dungeon finder and start running the 5-man instances, I've done a mega-post to GY a few pages back about this. They're a
big part of the game and massively removed from what you'll be used to when out doing your normal solo questing.
viewtopic.php?p=581653#p581653Instances are awesome, especially when you're running them with friends and/or guildies. We ran a couple of heroics last night, all five of us were 'well oiled' to say the least (it was after midnight and we were too drunk to play Bad Company 2 competently), all on Mumble talking all manner of crap to each other, and we were fucking
dreadful, we took an hour to get through an instance that's doable in about twenty minutes with a good random group, but we all had an absolute blast. At one point one of the guys started playing his banjo (a real one in his house) to get our spirits up after a particularly ridiculously awful wipe, singing some kind of bluegrass version of 'I Will Survive' - I was crying tears of laughter. No other game can do this.
9) There are many 'games within the game' when it comes to WoW. There's the massively significant economy aspect of it (which is basically locked out in the free trial as no auction house), there are the professions (of which there are many), there's PvP (player versus player) if you fancy a crack at that (PvP is whole subset of the game - 100 player battlegrounds are quite an experience). There's a whole world of entirely optional stuff, some people like collecting vanity pets, some people like getting weird and wonderful achievements, some people like maxing out all the secondary professions, some people never give them a second's thought.
Some folks like running through all the old raid content with Level 85 characters, so you might get four of five 85s and blast through the old 40-man raids from vanilla WoW, or kill Illidan in the Black Temple (a Burning Crusdade 25-man raid) - all the old game is still there, Blizzard don't 'turn it off', so it's all still there to explore.
10) As you level up through the game, you get more and more awesome. You get loads of abilities, you get mounts (ground mounts to start with then flying mounts), you get kick-ass gear and you can take on packs of enemies (level-appropriate) of a size that would have been unthinkable early on. Depending on your class you can tank or heal or DPS (damage deal) in instances, at the end game there's the option of 10 or 25 man raids, the more you understand the game and your character, the more there is to see and do.
It's like learning a whole new language, and once you become fluent in it there's a quite wonderful experience to be had. Conversely, whilst it's all new and alien, even with the huge amounts of hand-holding that the games does now, it can be confusing and somewhat underwhelming, unfortunately that's the nature of the MMO beast I think.
Even with that wall of text there's loads of things I've forgotten or haven't mentioned, my main point would be, don't make a final judgement on the game at Level 5, it'd be like going to Disneyland, paying your entry fee, walking through the turnstiles and then before you've even so much as
looked at anything, declaring that Disneyland is rubbish with nothing to do, and that you're going home.
Finally, I can't emphasise enough how WoW works so much better if you've got the social aspect of it to enjoy, ideally IRL friends who are on your server (or at least on Real ID to chat with), but even better in a guild with some decent folks in it. Obviously the dream combination is a guild that's got some of your IRL friends in it (that's the situation in my guild), in all honesty if it weren't for the social aspect of WoW I feel I'd enjoy it quite a bit less.
Register
Calendar
FAQ
Search
